The 30 Best Dream Pop Albums

With many of the lists we’ve assembled over the past few years, the parameters have been clear. To be considered Britpop, for example, a record had to be guitar-based, from the UK, and released during a certain period. We can argue endlessly about what’s a mixtape and what’s an album, but in assembling the 50 Best Rap Mixtapes of the Millennium, the title said it all.

“Dream pop,” however, is a little different. The term has meant different things to different audiences at different times, because it was always more of a descriptor than a proper genre. So in assembling this list, we took the descriptive quality of the term and ran with it, assembling a list of 30 records that felt like they belonged together even as they came from different scenes, eras, and geographic locations. Despite the wide range of music here, there are certain qualities that unite these records: atmosphere, intimacy, a light coating of psychedelia, and, yes, dreaminess. In some cases, we defined what belongs here by thinking about what the music is not. We made a conscious decision to not include records that wound up on our Best Shoegaze Albums list—even though shoegaze and dream pop have, at times, been used interchangeably—and we avoided the more twee end of the indie pop spectrum.

Before we get into the list itself, here’s a quick word on dream pop from Dean Wareham, whose first band was Galaxie 500 (featured twice here) and who played on bills with many other of our picks.

Scenes From a Dream

By Dean Wareham

As a musician, you often have to answer the question, “What kind of music do you play?” “Dream pop” elicits blank looks. It’s a construct created after the fact, not a movement associated with a particular time or place or hairstyle. Maybe it’s a category for bands, across recent decades, who are hard to categorize.

Galaxie 500 were called a lot of things. New York magazine called us “plain soporific.” A VJ at MTV England told us we were “wimpy.” Later, we were dubbed “slowcore,” along with bands like Low and Codeine who played a lot slower (and in a more controlled fashion) than we did. “Proto-shoegaze” was another, but I know we were not shoegaze; those bands buried their vocals and the guitarists strummed chords through a whole slew of effects pedals or a multi-effects processor. (For the first year of Galaxie 500 shows, I had exactly one pedal by my shoes: a Boss CS-3 compressor, which I fed into a Music Man 112-RD50 amplifier with onboard reverb and overdrive.) Shoegaze bands are more of an assault, a wall of sound, while there is more empty space in dream pop—allowing more room for melody and counter-melody, whether on vocals, keyboards, or guitars.

In the summer of 1987, Damon and Naomi and I started jamming together as Galaxie 500, and I moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where they were enrolled in graduate school. In Boston, all the bands sounded heavier than us; there were hardcore bands, and others playing a mix of metal and punk that was not yet called grunge. They probably knew what they were doing, while we were making it up as we went along. I was listening to a only a few current records that year: Opal’s Happy Nightmare Baby, Sonic Youth’s Sister, and Half Japanese’s Music to Strip By. More often, it was the likes of 13th Floor Elevators, Big Star, Love, or Jonathan Richman on the turntable.

That fall, we played some nervous local gigs, and in February, with a half-dozen half-written songs, we drove down to New York to record with producer Mark Kramer at his studio in Tribeca. Our sound became something else: On “Tugboat,” Kramer smothered the band in an infinite, hall-size reverb and tape delay. Our little three-piece band now sounded huge. Kramer’s unusual mixes are still hard to place as either ’80s or ’90s, and that’s a feature of many of these dream pop records: sounds that you don’t identify with a particular year, songs that are not tailored by hit producers for commercial radio play.

Dean Wareham; graphic by Martine Ehrhart

Our new cassette got us signed to a fledgling Boston label named Aurora Records. We couldn’t believe our good fortune. We kept playing shows, aided by DJs at college stations WMBR and WHRB, and then the album Today that we recorded in another three-day session with Kramer. We played a lot of shows over the next year, with the Lemonheads, the Pixies, Sonic Youth, Pussy Galore, the Flaming Lips. It was all D.I.Y.: In July 1988, unable to get an official gig at the New Music Seminar, we played at Nightingale, a bar on Second Avenue in New York. We put up some handbills outside CBGB and on random lampposts in the East Village. Naomi’s handbills drew from vintage celestial drawings and images, and our very name suggested a band from another solar system.

We signed with Rough Trade Records. In September 1989, they brought us to London for a prestigious gig at the Institute of Contemporary Arts. We were terrified. They had seen impressive American bands like Dinosaur Jr., Sonic Youth, and Big Black. Galaxie 500 was a pretty different live experience; people had to strain to make out what we were doing. But some important people liked the show; that week, we recorded a BBC radio session for John Peel, who loved our recording of “Don’t Let Our Youth Go to Waste.” Listening to our broadcast was one Simon Raymonde of Cocteau Twins. The British audience seemed more receptive to my off-kilter vocals and our stark/lush songs; at any rate, things moved much faster there. We toured England with the Sundays, who had something we did not: a couple of beautiful, infectious pop songs that were bona fide radio hits.

The final Galaxie 500 tour, in March 1991, was in support of Cocteau Twins on their Heaven or Las Vegas tour of the USA. They were a special live band, the musicians standing in a line across the stage. With percussion and keyboard tracks running off an Akai sequencer, everything was perfect, ethereal and shimmering, and they did not make mistakes. Next to them, we were a garage rock band. I toured with Cocteau Twins again in 1994, this time with my new band, Luna. “They are two bands that couldn’t be farther apart,” noted TheNew York Times. But today both bands are called dream pop; it’s an expansive category, and I have to think we have something in common after all.

Dean Wareham is a founding member of Galaxie 500 and Luna and the author of Black Postcards, a Penguin paperback.

Scribble Mural Comic Journal

2007

30

Scribble Mural Comic Journal is the sound of an email with the subject line “FWD: FWD: FWD: FWD: dream pop.” It’s a slightly radical, distorted definition of it, one beyond chiming 4AD guitars and gossamer vocals, disassembled and rearranged in a space somewhere between a parasomnia hallucination and a club at the bottom of a lake. Four-on-the-floor beats melt into ambient spaces; the calamitous and enchanting “A Mundane Phonecall to Jack Parsons” is everything but. In their humble beginnings, A Sunny Day in Glasgow were comprised of the musician Ben Daniels, his twin sisters Robin and Lauren (who would later leave the band), and Pro Tools, so some of these songs feel less structured than most on this list, like they forgot to build a fence around the album. A song like “Lists, Plans” could scatter away into the night, but it’s this formlessness, this broken-mirror sound that speaks to their rightful place in the dream pop canon. –Jeremy D. Larson

She Hangs Brightly

1990

29

Mazzy Star may have been born out of the ashes of Opal, guitarist David Roback’s Paisley Underground band, but on She Hangs Brightly, they arrived as a fully formed musical force. Everything that Mazzy Star would later achieve is here, perfectly realized, on their debut album, from the narcotic blues of “Halah” to the Doors-y crawl of the title track and the heady acoustic shuffle of “Free.” Hope Sandoval’s hypnagogic whisper and Roback’s velvety guitar tones create a gorgeous, late-night atmosphere, tempered by songs that borrow from the vivid musical austerity of early blues: On the heartbreaking “Ride It On,” for example, every stroke of the guitar and beat of the tambourine fall with perfect precision. The band even cover Memphis Minnie’s 1941 track “I Am Sailin’,” the song’s searing clarity reflecting their own meticulous songwriting. Mazzy Star would later go on to greater commercial and critical success, but dream pop would rarely again reach such sharply honed heights. –Ben Cardew

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

2009

28

Dream pop and indie pop are complicated cousins. Lines are drawn over technicalities like: How much jangle is allowed before celestial becomes C86? Is tremolo ever twee? When does shyness devolve into shoegaze? The Pains of Being Pure at Heart’s self-titled debut exists in the swirling intersection. Though easily the noisiest record on this list—you could say it never drifts off to Slumberland, pun intended—it’s determined to dream. More My Bloody Valentine circa “Sunny Sundae Smile” than Loveless, the Brooklyn band mixes a toffee and Vicodin cocktail topped off with a heavy dollop of power chords, fuzz pedals, and watercolor psychedelia. Guitarist/vocalist Kip Berman swoons with Edwyn Collins’ passion while Peggy Wang’s synths and backing vocals float through the reverb. It’s a romantic, youthful nostalgia that Berman once described as “sort of a John Hughes, magical feeling,” where the library is a hot hookup spot and every dweeb in an anorak can take on the world. –Quinn Moreland

Split

1994

27

By their second LP, Lush were drifting into the space between shoegaze and Britpop, the moonlit zone where guitars and windchimes suddenly had wonderful pop hooks to hang onto. With Split, the guitarists/vocalists Miki Berenyi and Emma Anderson, bassist Philip King, and drummer Chris Acland made an album of pearly guitars and prurient lyrics, born of the kind of intraband trauma that could really flourish at a rural French studio in the middle of winter. In separate interviews, band members have described the process as “traumatic” and “agonizing,” with Berenyi adding that she was in a state of “pulverized victimhood.” No wonder the resulting album is pitch-black thematically, touching on child abuse, infidelity, voyeurism, and death. But thanks to the meticulous production of Mike Hedges, Split sounds so luxurious and so powerful, the essential sound of Lush. Berenyi and Anderson’s voices sky together in their clearest, most present harmonies. Songs last no longer than they need to, even the ones that stretch to eight minutes. Split is at once grounded and aloft—fiery, poppy, druggy, and alone. –Jeremy D. Larson

Oshin

2012

26

The debut album from Captured Tracks stalwarts DIIV didn’t intentionally set out to channel dream pop. Yes, they were fans of Ride, but frontman Zachary Cole Smith cited this particular album’s inspirations as krautrock and Malian music. Yet from the opening gambit of the instrumental track “(Druun)” to the distant vocals of “Past Lives”—vocals that sound like they're being teleported from another dimension—DIIV quickly found themselves cited as revivalists of dream pop. The record plays out like an inversion of a late-’80s Sub Pop grunge record, taking the dirge and muddiness of guitars, drums, and bass and oversaturating that in blissed-out ambience. It ebbs and flows in a manner that often makes it difficult to distinguish tracks, driven largely by rhythm, echo, and a sense of wonderment. Lyrically, it’s not trying to offer much in the way of catharsis; instead, it provides a bedrock for you to come, lie down, and sink deeper into whatever emotional state you’re in. Isn’t that what dreams are made of? –Eve Barlow

Gemini

2010

25

Gemini was released as part of the 2010 guitar-pop mini-boom, but it could just as easily have been recorded in 1989. Jack Tatum’s first album as Wild Nothing is full of songs that exist just outside the margins of your memory: Haven’t I heard this before? Isn’t this guitar part familiar? Didn’t an ex-boyfriend make me a mixtape with “Drifter” sandwiched between Cocteau Twins deep cuts?

Tatum put Gemini together while studying at Virginia Tech, and its amateurish charm separates the album from his more expansive, polished later work. When songs like opener “Live in Dreams” and the chiming “Our Composition Book” fade in slowly, it’s easy to imagine hearing them streaming from a dorm room window overlooking a verdant quad. And while there isn’t much lyrical depth to Gemini, that’s a feature, not a bug. You can listen to “Summer Holiday” or the gloomy, glamorous “Chinatown” and fill in the blanks with your own memories of being young, sad, and in love. –Jamieson Cox

Clinging to a Scheme

2010

24

For many dream pop bands, drum machines and samplers help ground a sound so ethereal, it runs the risk of floating away. For the Radio Dept., these tools are precisely what set them apart on their third album, Clinging to a Scheme. With their mix of sunny guitar jangle and melancholic sentiment, the Swedish trio could easily be slotted as indie pop. But factor in their apparent fondness for Saint Etienne and darkwave, diet-Eurodance-meets-reggae beats, and jokes landed via spoken-word samples (à la the Avalanches), and the album rests at the more electronic end of the dream pop spectrum. The post-punk riffs that made them interchangeable with ’80s bands on the 2006 Marie Antoinette soundtrack remain intact, as do the lo-fi charms of their 2003 breakthrough Lesser Matters. But on Clinging to a Scheme, the Radio Dept. apply their eclectic tricks easily to their moody, understated soundscapes. –Jillian Mapes

Brightblack Morning Light

2006

23

Born in the South, transplanted to Northern California, ostentatiously fond of cannabis, and known to perform in headbands alongside a sleepy dog named Lolly, Brightblack Morning Light all but invited mockery of the get-your-patchouli-stink-outta-my-store variety. Fortunately, on their self-titled second album, the highlight of their brief career, the mid-Aughts duo of Nathan “Nabob” Shineywater and Rachael “Rabob” Hughes sounded like the best possible combination of those influences.

Out of burbling electric piano, twangy slide-guitar melodies that split the difference between Hank Williams and Mazzy Star, and their own somnolent vocals, Shineywater and Hughes crafted languid, lightly psychedelic paeans to the natural world. Brightblack Morning Light beefed up the dream pop aesthetic for heartier tastes—this was music for freak-folk stoners on a Joshua Tree camping trip, not pale, narcotized indoor kids. Even if you laughed at the trippy rainbow glasses that came packaged with the double LP, it was difficult to resist the blissful midsummer vibes they accompanied. –Judy Berman

I Could Live in Hope

1994

22

It takes courage for a band to play as quietly as Low do on I Could Live in Hope, their debut album. Mimi Parker brushes her drums as if fearful of waking a sleeping child, John Nichols’ trebly basslines are sparse to the point of abstraction, and Alan Sparhawk’s skeletal guitar suggests the gaseous atmosphere of Brian Eno’s ambient works, set off by vocal melodies of a powerful, understated economy. The effect urges leaning in, paying attention, but Low don’t want to seduce you; they want to unnerve you. I Could Live in Hope inhabits a world of disquiet, like the lingering malaise of a bad dream, where a line as seemingly innocuous as “She used to let me cut her hair” feels ridden with shame and discomfort. Dream pop records often come steeped in instrumental flourishes and pillowy effects; on I Could Live in Hope, Low prove that small gestures can be transformative, too. –Ben Cardew

Suburban Light

2000

21

As its title strongly suggests, the Clientele’s 2000 debut album is all about finding the magic in the mundane. Collecting singles the band released in their late-’90s formative phase, Suburban Light showcases singer/guitarist Alasdair MacLean’s preternatural gift for crafting songs that feel both warmly familiar yet eerily distant, like a golden-oldies station beaming in from another dimension. Jangly gems such as “We Could Walk Together” and “(I Want You) More Than Ever” betray the unsubtle influence of ’60s-pop melody makers like the Byrds, the Left Banke, and the early Bee Gees, then shoot it through a gauzy Galaxie 500 filter, casting their lovelorn lyrics in a narcotic haze and letting each languid guitar line ripple out to infinity. The result isn’t so much dream pop as daydream pop: the sound of wistfully gazing out a rain-soaked window, imagining the more wondrous world that lies on the other side of the glass, and counting down the time until your escape with each drop of drizzle that rolls down the pane. –Stuart Berman